Azucar!

Today is the birthday of Cuban diva Celia Cruz (1925-2003).  In this vintage video, the bra looks ridiculously uncomfortable, but Celia is rocking that lamé dress….

Video: Ore Ska Band, “Hana no ska dance”

J-Ska, public transit, and candy–what more could you need?

[Video description:  Japanese all-girl ska band in video for Pocky candy.  The band members park their bikes, all wearing white shirts and black ties, and board a train, where they break out their instruments and start a party.  People of all ages are dancing and eating candy.  The video ends when the train comes to its next stop.]

Heather asked for this….

A polka-style version of The Office theme on accordion:

How about steel drums:

Or maybe you prefer marimba:

Accomplished

Some days, I feel like I’ve accomplished something if I attack a closet or scrub a bathroom. Those chores have a certain quality of instant gratification that’s appealing, and they can be done while listening to

podcasts, so I’m willing. Sometimes.

Some days, I feel like I’ve accomplished something if I write a couple strong paragraphs, or finish editing a draft and press “send.” That’s my work and I’m good at it, so it’s satisfying and usually ticks off boxes on the non-existent “to-do” list I should probably keep.

I always feel like I’ve accomplished something when I teach an art class at Lincoln, or when I finish reading a book.

But some days, I need to make things. After Grace (and before her Julie) pointed me towards reverse applique, I gave it a try, using t-shirts and pearl cotton already in the house. I also needed a campaign t-shirt, and such things can’t be postponed, so I applied the technique to the subject at hand; the results are at right above. I wore it the rest of the day. It’s cool if the cut edges fray up a little in the wash, so I’m hoping for that. (This tutorial gives the basic process, but I didn’t use the sewing machine, and I didn’t use pins–duct tape did a great job. I also used a bit of white acrylic paint with my stencil, which is why I have three colors instead of two.)

And I finished and mailed off the mix CD promised to Lisa C. Here’s the cover:

CD cover for Lisa C

Lisa and I have been swapping mix CDs since 2004(!), and we have a pretty good sense of where our tastes overlap.

The tracklist this time (most of the links lead to YouTube videos; some are just to band websites or Wikipedia pages):

1. Lies (The Pierces)
2. Kissing Like it’s Love (The Voyces)
3. Reno (Finishing School)
4. Nearer than Heaven (The Delays)
5. Cherry Tulips (Headlights)
6. Don’t Lose Yourself (Laura Veirs)
7. I am Constellation (The Kingdom)
8. Secret Service (A Kid Hereafter)
9. I’m Gonna Catch Me a Rat (Fabienne DelSol)
10. Whatever Gets You Through Today (The Radio)
11. Rain Song (PJ Olsson)
12. Sheets (Promise and the Monster)
13. Let’s Talk about Spaceships (Say Hi to your Mom)
14. This is Where We Are (Ravens & Chimes)
15. I Kissed a Girl (Max Vernon)
16. New City Love (Jonas Game)
17. Country Song (James William Hindle)
18. Rose (Geoff Smith)
19. Let Me Get Your Coat (Future Clouds & Radar)
20. Pushback (Static of the Gods)
21. Two Ways (the 1900s)
22. Black Butterfly (Laura Veirs)

Lisa’s CD to ME arrived yesterday–Monday–and I believe she only mailed it Saturday from New Jersey! I listened to it immediately in the minivan, driving to and from swim team practice. Good stuff, Lisa, thanks. Watch your PO Box.

Today I have a raging cold, so I’m going to dose up on decongestants and watch old (recent series) Doctor Who episodes while I doze. Nothing will get accomplished. That’s okay too.

Happy Autumn

Bell Peppers!, originally uploaded by pennylrichardsca.

The farmer’s market still has sunny vegetables like this tumble of red and gold and green bell peppers, and the equinox isn’t for a few weeks, but school’s back in and I’m going to hear the first Bach’s Lunch recital at TLC of the season today…. so it’s still happy autumn to me.

Video: Promise and the Monster, “Sheets”

I have about 4000 songs on my iPod (not counting podcasts). They’re loosely organized into all kinds of playlists, but sometimes I just let all 4000 shuffle and run. I like the juxtapositions and the surprise. When I do that for long enough, I generally find a song or two that I don’t remember hearing before–something I probably picked up for free someplace like music.download.com, in a batch of “hmm, let’s see what this sounds like” tracks, and then never quite paid attention to it again. This was one of those lost songs, until yesterday. Now it’s haunting me, and I keep replaying it. The singer (Billie Lindahl) is Swedish, but the lyrics are in English. (Visual description: black-and-white, closeups of singer’s head interspersed with images of her walking downstairs, outside, and near an old building–there’s an effect that makes all the light tones smear in vertical bars. Partway through, the singer is dripped upon by something dark, like paint; she spreads the paint around her face like a mask.)

McWay Falls

McWay Falls, originally uploaded by pennylrichardsca.

We’re home from our trip, which included a stop to see the lovely McWay Falls in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, above. Much of the park (including the wheeled access) was damaged by the recent fires and closed to visitors, but the cove and falls were still visible from the terraces on a sunny July morning. Son woke up to his 13th birthday in a dorm suite at SFSU, and we had little chocolate lava cakes to celebrate; he got a new toy, and a t-shirt from a friend at the same conference.

The conference went fine, it was great to see old friends and meet folks I’ve “known” online for years. But I still get intensely bored with the format of conferences (sitting and listening and sitting and listening some more). As a not-so-young independent scholar, I’m not really in synch with the young academics who are there mostly to network and talk about tenure and funding and this and that, so I don’t have a lot to chat about. It was a very small conference, so there was no book display to offer refuge, either.

Also, I ran out of yarn before I ran out of need for yarn.  That’s not the conference organizers’ fault, though.

I acquired, uh, ten used CDs on the trip–but spent less than $20 total, in three shops (Amoeba, Boo Boo Records in SLO, and Streetlights in Santa Cruz).  If you’re ever in the neighborhood near the SF Amoeba Music store, the New Ganges vegetarian Indian restaurant is friendly (if maybe too insistent about suggestions), on a quiet street, and makes some mighty fine takeout (but there’s no wheelchair access I noticed, so heads up there).  And we were so ridiculously happy with our Afghan lunch from Khyber Pass in Santa Cruz that I have to mention them too.

Video help

Somehow I can’t embed youtube videos anymore. I haven’t been doing anything differently, but they don’t show up. Any ideas?

Whoo-hoo, I got it! Now you can enjoy some vintage Miriam Makeba too.

Best. Hairline. Ever.

Roland Gift is turning 47 today. Sigh.

Gop Gop Gop

So it’s Friday again and that means I’m going to post a video. Morning Edition had a story about the upcoming Eurovision finals–so I’m featuring Verka Serduchka, the Ukrainian who took second place at the 2007 finals. Gop Gop Gop means “jump jump jump.” Beyond that you’re on your own:

[Visuals described: a long under-lit banquet table, with an array of grotesque wedding guests, often filmed with a fish-eye lens for further exaggeration. The characters are wearing pseudo-traditional Ukrainian wedding gear, including the main character, Serduchka, who’s in very unconvincing bridal drag; throughout the video, characters are drinking vodka, eating, embracing, kissing and eventually dancing on the table.]